


The Land of The Moonlit Sun

by the_best_otaku



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25084627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_best_otaku/pseuds/the_best_otaku
Summary: This is the story of a vampire psychologist, a clairvoyant, and the Great Depression. Set around the turn of the 30s, Alice Bechtel’s tale is one of somebody soon to be a (however unhappily) married woman; but her strange epileptic fits stand in the way. Alice’s strange knack for seeing the future draws the attention of Silas, a hopelessly sympathetic vampire and psychologist by day. With the help of his disgruntled assistant little Elise, and the threat of an overindulged vampire duo ravaging New England; Silas must make the choice to leave Alice the human alone, or save her from a fate worse than death by extraordinary means.





	1. Premonition

**Author's Note:**

> So uh- little did I know Alice has a human backstory which is genuinely quite interesting. I like the murder/ mystery angle of it all. Ironically it seems Stephanie Meyer and I may in fact share a brain cell, cause a lot of what she wrote corresponds directly with what I could come up with. I’m a rabid fan of the Twilight books, I think they’re genuinely quite good. No joke. I just thought Alice’s backstory could do with some more finagling, and I was haunted by this story idea. I have no guarantee I won’t run out of steam, or be monumentally interesting, but I hope somebody gets a kick out of this for the time being. The setting is between 1925-30s New England adjacent (picture a Pre-Fallout style suburb you’ll get the picture). I’m also trying to keep things Steph Meyer-y in terms of style- hence the one word chapter titles. I wax a lot less poetic in this story, very unlike my SNK fic.
> 
> The title is growing on me but like idk I may change it...
> 
> Also Tim is 100% supposed to have an Edward-like feel to him. I’d like to think that’s why Alice and Edward get along; Edward is what Tim Jr *should* have been like with his little sisters.

Alice had been picking apart a bagel with her fingers. She was staring down at her blood-red nails, which her sister Claire had been kind enough to stud in little white polka dots.

“You’ll see,” Claire had smartly “This’ll be what all the bearcats are wearin’ in twenty years.” She’d stuck her tongue out in concentration- very Claire like.

The memory made Alice smile a little, and it was suddenly easier to drown out her mother’s radio, and her cousin Lettie’s dog running figure eights around her ankles. The dog, aptly named ‘Buster’, always made Alice nervous. Not because the miniature poodle was particularly aggressive, but it’s presence gave Alice a sense of unease. She was convinced, when she looked into Buster’s vacant chocolate eyes, that something horrible would soon befall him.

“Maybe Lettie’ll run him over in her dad’s jalopy.” Her brother Timothy had snorted the day the dog had been dropped off. Lettie was going into town for a weekend, and Buster’s sitter was on summer holidays.

Claire’s little head had popped up from her magazine, her thin fingers were creating dents in the shag carpet. “Aw Tim, but then Lettie won’t have anybody who really understands a bitch like her.” Alice had laughed, and their mother had taken away Claire’s fashion magazine as punishment.

A jazzy tune was emanating from the radio now, and Alice frowned at it’s great silver knob. She wondered if anybody would notice if she’d turned it down...however slightly.

“Don’t slouch dear,” came her mother’s soprano voice “You’ll wilt like a flower then won’t you.” She had been distractedly dusting the kitchen cabinets.

The time seemed to be passing at a snail’s pace. It didn’t help that Alice was utterly exhausted; she’d been just as restless last night as she had the rest of the month. Plagued with visions of the confederate flag, the same one that she’d seen in Tim’s college textbooks; in her dreams Alice wasn’t quite sure where she was; sometimes in a great field, sometimes in a pokey town, and sometimes surrounded by heaping piles of dead bodies. But the bodies were...wrong. Alice had the horrible impression the alabaster beings were not dead in the ground, but rather pretending; waiting for her to stroll past so they could snap at her ankles and do unspeakable things to her. This was usually when she awoke, and she’d retreat to her windowsill to watch the sun rise.

Alice’s purply bags hadn’t escaped her mother’s notice, and she’d been unceremoniously attacked with her sister’s pancake face makeup first thing before breakfast.

Her mother, now dusting vigorously, must have noticed the face Alice was making at the memory, and had put her tiny hands on her narrow waist.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Lucille Bechtel had demanded of her daughter “If Jonathan sees you like that he’ll think you’re a cancelled stamp!”

Alice wanted to complain profusely- the way she had the first time Jonathan had come around. “What a bluenose,” she’d moaned at Claire “You wanna help me run away from home?”

Tim had heard them cutting a rug in the wee hours, and had pushed Claire into the family pool for waking him up. For some reason, it seemed Tim never got to face their mother’s wrath.

Indeed they were waiting for the arrival of Alice’s betrothed; one Jonathan Lee Westbrook, lawyer extraordinaire and (according to Alice) monumental bore. Jonathan had been hand-picked by Alice’s father Timothy Bechtel, an equally successful blood-sucking paralegal, who wanted desperately to secure the family’s name in high society. Alice knew there was no point in arguing, as Timothy Bechtel Sr ruled the household with an iron fist; quick to anger and generally unbearable to all. Alice’s engagement had come as a shock to her- a shock she’d had to morph into jubilous glee in front of her parents.

Alice gazed down at her wrap dress, canary yellow with a splash of white polka dots. She grit her teeth, Claire had dressed her up like some kind of garish bird. Alice’s plain face stared back at her from the reflection of the toaster. Her older brother Timothy could be heard by the screen door, flipping through yesterday’s newspaper with unfazed stoicism. Alice stifled a yawn, and the look of her twisted face elicited a lopsided smile from Timothy.

Claire’s clacking red heels could be heard racing towards the kitchen suddenly, and the bang of the front door announced her arrival. Mrs. Bechtel huffed, and lecturing loudly at no one she began her crusade to the porch to inspect the damage. Damage, Alice noted grimly, their detail-oriented father was sure to notice. Claire was grasping the day’s newspaper firmly in both hands, and she skittered to a stop on the linoleum, gazing between Alice and Timothy in a discombobulated way.

“It’s happened again!” She cried, her voice strangled with excitement “Did’ya see the paper Tim? They’re saying the gangs are getting closer to Ansonia.”

Tim sighed, putting down his own paper and running a hand through his tousled hair. “Only you would get so excited about something as gory as gangsters,” he frowned at Claire in disdain “How many they get this time, eh?”

Claire’s little fists balled up around her paper again, and she slammed it onto the kitchen table with renewed force. “It’s up to fifty two!” She breathed “The fuzz was patrolling the edge of town again- I saw ‘em coming a mile away.”

Alice rested her head in her hand, glad her mother’s prying eyes would now miss her obvious exhaustion. Claire Bechtel was enraptured by crime- perhaps even obsessed. She’d read all the good gun slinging books, watched all the TV dramas on the subject, and knew every weary jazz song about gangsters there was to know. Now was the golden age for people like Claire, Alice thought ruefully, as gang violence enveloped the inner city their town of Ansonia had escaped unscathed- so far.

“I doubt they’ll come down here,” Tim murmured, clearly deep in thought over the morning headline. It read: ‘Mystery Gangsters Strike Again Near Providence’. “Seem to be getting closer, though.”

Claire smiled up at him, her ringlets bouncing around her big round cheeks “I hope I get to meet a gangster one day!” She giggled suddenly “I’d have a whole lotta questions about being a moll.” She declared ominously.

Alice’s ears pricked up “Claire, you can’t possible want to be involved in all that.” She said flatly.

“I’d bet if she was born in the body of a man, Claire would be a fanatic member of the fuzz.” Timothy said, meeting Alice’s eyes.

“More like a stool-pigeon,” Alice began, but her bagel slipped from her hands suddenly- a reverie had taken over her thoughts now.

Claire seemed to remember something, and as she bounced away Alice stood up sharply “Don’t!” She cried- but it was too late. The echo of Alice’s chair scraping the ground hung in the kitchen.

Claire had already bumped her head on the corner of an open cupboard, and a little patch of purple was forming on her pale skin; it was just as Alice had seen a second prior.

“Ouch,” Claire muttered in a low voice “How’d you know I was gonna do that?” She was rubbing her forehead furiously.

Timothy threw an anxious glance at Alice; this was a look she was growing incredibly accustomed to these days.

“Had a feeling,” Alice breathed, and smoothing out her skirt (now dusted in bagel crumbs) she decided it was time to sneak off “Alright lads, time for me to blow.”

Timothy shrugged, a very Timothy-like response indeed; Claire was hunting through the ice box for frozen peas.

As Alice breezed past Timothy he put out a foot to stop her “You’d best settle in, before John gets here.”

Alice grit her teeth, out of genuine frustration this time “Or what Tim?” She teased dangerously “You’ll peach to mom?”

Timothy huffed, but made no effort to stop her. Alice stalked into the backyard, and was soon beyond the garden gate into the small patch of grass beyond. She could faintly hear her mother fussing about the state of the house, and she made out the continued rustling of Claire in the ice box. She could feel, although she hoped she was wrong, Tim’s dark eyes on her back as she skulked away. She heard his words again: you’d best settle in before John gets here. She kicked an empty Coke can on the dirt road, and digging her pearly whites into her bottom lip, she continued her march to nowhere.

Elsewhere, one Doctor Silas Goldwyn was tap-tap-tapping on his broad wooden desk. His cigarette was dangling limply from his mouth; the only genuine relief he had from work these days was the occasional puff on some Old Gold. Not that he valued- or really needed- his lungs. Silas was feigning attention as Mrs Annabelle Sweeney droned on and on about this week’s made up symptom. It seemed Sweeney had no shortage of great ideas about what was going South with her health. Sometimes she’d find a growth or a mole- within mere hours of having just been by. Other times she’d work herself into a frenzy about a dream her neighbour had had, swearing up and down it meant something grave about her own psyche. Silas had a year’s worth of rehearsal behind him; he’d memorized when to nod and when to shake his head as Sweeney’s questions crashed around him. She’d tire herself out soon enough, he thought as he regarded the clock, and then she’d shuffle off feeling mighty satisfied with her own pseudo psychology.

Silas was thinking very hard about Loredana Negri this morning. In fact it wasn’t atypical of his mornings in general to be posted up in his office thinking. Sweeney’s voice was like the necessary hum of a radio or white noise machine; it made thinking clear, linear. Nurse Negri, with her funny way of squinting at test tubes and her atrocious handwriting. Nurse Negri, with her bronzey skin and her manicured hands which moved and flourished everytime she spoke. Silas was getting tired of running away from Lori (as she insisted in being called); yet unable to put an end to their strange trysts, he’d found himself in his usual after-breakfast spot: the third floor broom closet, entangled in Loredana’s arms. Silas groaned at the memory, and Sweeney nodded rapturously as though he’d agreed with her on something. Today Silas had broken a broom handle as Loredana’s tender mouth had settled on his jaw, and in an effort to hide the destruction he wrought, he’d had to leave the closet with a handful of splinters. 

Lori’s gently thrumming heart, so loud to Silas in those intimate moments, made him horribly uncomfortable. The dull ache of an unsatiated throat had almost been too much to bear, and her soft arms had seemed uncomfortably warm. The rush of vital blood, coursing through her sun-kissed bosom, had caused Silas to wreak silent havoc on the broom.

“Why don’t you just turn her?” Elise often suggested, in her usual disinterested tone “Then you wouldn’t have to worry about eating her.”

Silas scowled at the doctorate on the wall; sometimes he hated how Elise’s mind honed in on his innermost monologue like that. Perhaps it was the side effect of being joined at the hip for hundreds of years.

“What say you?” Sweeney’s voice had slipped through his reverie, she was demanding answers now.

“Well Mrs Sweeney,” Silas breathed at last “How does that make you feel?”

Sweeney’s eyes lit up, and before Silas had realized the floodgates he’d opened, a new bout of explanation had come pouring out of her.

Silas closed his eyes, pretending to adjust the glasses he obviously didn’t need. He thought very hard in Elise’s direction- he was sure she would be listening. Elise was always listening. His frustration must have seemed funny, as he’d received a ghostly chuckle in return, and the brief image of a black and white picture. Elise’s thoughts were coloured with genuine enjoyment at that, and Silas thought she must have been thinking very hard for him to glean a taste of her vision.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a long day after all.

A/N; I retroactively changed June’s name to Loredana, not for any other reason that I thought it sounded nice.


	2. Hot Tin Roof

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice’s dearly beloved pays her a visit, but she’s hard pressed to escape from him as soon as possible. Enthralled with her little sister- the eternally energetic Claire, Alice puts to rest thoughts of her overbearing family and stale love life; and perhaps a sneaking suspicion her older brother Tim isn’t all he appears to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an expression for “being in a constant state of anxiety”? Neither did I until now.

Alice and her siblings had been gathered- or perhaps wrangled was a better word- together in the living room. Lucille’s anxious straightening up was in full swing now, and she was busily arranging and re arranging trinkets and heirlooms. 

“Sit down,” Alice had snorted “John’s not coming to appraise the furniture.”

Lucille had shot her a look and said something shrill, and her shaky, skeletal hands had gone back to their fussing. She was dressed in a light blue house dress, with her usual apron tired securely around her waist. Despite Alice’s very vocal protests that now was a time for liberation, her mother seemed firmly planted in the early 1900s of her birth and insisted in dressing the part of ‘dutiful wife.’ Her black hair had been smoothed back from her wide forehead, and Lucille’s pallid and perpetually worried face was haphazardly smeared in Claire’s drug store makeup.

Speaking of Claire, she’d been barred from the gathering for her overzealous nature. She was sitting on the stairs, just out of sight; gazing between the carved wooden handrail whenever she could, her teenage face bobbing into view every now and again. Her blondeish curls- unnaturally coloured for a Bechtel- made a soft scraping sound against her silky blouse. 

Across from Alice, Tim sat in his smartest brown suit, his bronzey hair looking barely put together, and his deep set eyes boring a hole into Alice’s face. She pressed her lips into a tight line; he was...dissecting her again. Tim’s searching eyes seemed to always be glued to Alice these days. Alice suppressed a dry laugh; he looked so much like her Uncle Earl when he got like this. Tim’s tall, lanky form, and his flippantly cold attitude were clear indicators he was Timothy Sr’s child. Yet, when Alice thought back to her memories of her mother’s third cousin- Earl- she thought she spied his very same dark eyes peering back at her in Tim’s face. Alice pushed the thought away, the way she usually did when the implication made her nervous.

She knew very well why Tim was staring at her; the accusatory glare was indeed hard to ignore. Alice had ‘seen’ Claire’s bumping of her head seconds before, as Claire and Tim were still engrossed in the newspaper. It was the same strange intuition which often overtook her in her private moments (and sometimes plainly in public). Alice would often ‘see’ what was about to come to pass; popping from present to future and back in excruciating detail. Epilepsy, they’d called her strange lucid trances, and had thrown her to the mercy of medication and psychiatrists alike. Her parents pretended, however poorly, that Alice was simply feeble-minded. A great seeker of attention, she’d been called, a girl of weak constitution; a mental feebleness inherited from frail Lucille, who cracks and crumbles when the wind blows wrong. Alice’s mother had been called an epileptic once too, although she swore up and down now that she was ‘reformed’. 

“It was running away from that shack in the city; the only good decision you’ve ever made, Lucy.” her father often asserted “Spending all that time with your batty sister- Mary Sue.” He often spat the name out venomously “And that little weasel of a bastard son; Earl. To hell with the Goodings I say; you’re a Bechtel now, and we’re sure to breed the mania out of you, kids.” This part was generally directed at ‘feeble-minded’ Alice. 

These were moments where Alice’s mother would grow very quiet, and suddenly astonishingly busy in a menial task. Alice had noticed the constant bruising of her mother’s chronically boney arms and legs, and wondered very much if the vendetta against Lucille Goodings and her orphaned sister Mary Sue had truly ebbed in the Bechtel family. She’d once made the mistake of asking, during her Uncle Earl’s final visit shortly before Claire’s birth, if Lucille had perhaps fallen in love with her third cousin- and only companion in the world. Lucille had deemed Alice too young to understand very much of anything, but the implication had cut her so deep that Alice had been given a mother-sanctioned thrashing that night by Timothy Sr.

So here they all were, pretending not to notice the great elephant in the room. An electric sense of impending doom at John’s arrival had settled in, and it hung oppressive in the living room air. Alice met Tim’s eyes, and clearly inspired by the annoyance plain on her face, he dropped his gaze and studied a stray novella instead. Tim didn’t pretend, Alice noted grimly, and he certainly didn’t labor under the impression she was an epileptic. He often shadowed her when she had her...moments. Perhaps Claire genuinely was too foolhardy to notice much of anything, or perhaps she was happy pretending her sister was a quasi-invalid (her words not Alice’s); either way, Tim’s questionable concern had irked Alice since time immemorial. 

“Is it because you think I’ll burst into flames- or because you’re so wound up about disappointing dad you wanna do away with me yourself?” She’d hissed at him last weekend, when the intense staring hadn’t let up after dinner. Alice had been washing dishes, and her accusatory whisper had drawn Claire in from the back garden. Tim had thrown out the usual irritated quip, and stalked off upstairs. 

“Ain’t gotta brace Tim like that, you know.” Claire had whined; for some reason this was a family of perpetual Tim-defenders. 

Alice’s smug remembering was cut short by the splutter of an engine outside. Ah, she thought without mirth, they’d arrived. Lucille seemed to be bracing herself, her eyes passing swiftly over her children. She made a hissing sound at Claire, who had all but toppled down the stairs trying to see. There was a clicking of the lock, and in strode Timothy Sr, with Johnathan hot on his trail.

Timothy Sr hadn’t changed, and seemed to be defying age in an abnormal way. Alice’s minds eye was unchanged in regards to her father; the only discernible change in his physique was his ever-growing gut. Her mother often spent long nights hunched over his trousers, letting the seams out. 

“Afternoon!” He called into the house, despite the rest of the Bechtels only being a few feet apart. 

“Good afternoon honey,” Lucille cooed, but it came out as more of a strangled crooning.

“Dad,” Tim began, and he rose as lithe as a feline from his upholstered chair “how was work?”

Timothy Sr was fiddling with his jacket, which took Lucille’s efforts to pry off. Alice thought it looked like her mother’s tiny body would be swallowed up entirely; she also thought she heard the muffled chuckling of Claire, who had witnessed the same fumbling show. Tim was chatting his father’s ear off, fussing about his research partner’s recent phone call. Tim idolized Timothy Sr, and with only his ongoing university degree to wax poetic about, he had a talent for shoe-horning it in whenever possible. 

She supposed it was her turn to bat, and she interrupted the brief exchange of pleasantries and offers for coffee to make herself known. Alice stood as straight as she could, all 4”8 of her poised and ready, and gave her father a dutiful head-bow. Johnathan was hanging his coat, and his blue eyes travelled quickly up and down her silk wrap dress. Alice suppressed a disgusted shudder.

“And how are you, Alice?’ Johnathan said, although there was no palpable excitement to be found.

“Same old,” she smiled passively “How are things at the firm?”

At this Johnathan was immediately thrilled, and began lecturing the two eager Timothys with a preening look that made Alice sick. She heard Claire bow out, scuttling up the stairs now that the juicy bits of conversation were bygones. Alice had spent very little time speaking in John’s presence, and mainly she worked herself into a frenzy observing this smug towering creature. Johnathan Lee Westbrook’s arrival had been signalled by her father’s unusually joyous mood one evening. The tip off should have been Lucille’s subdued silence at dinner, although much like Alice did now, Lucille wasn’t up for very much expression when her husband came around. When an outrageously posh desert was served Alice and Tim had shared a foreboding glance, half-expecting some horrible thing. ‘It’s finally happening,’ somebody would burst in and say ‘nuclear war- this is your final meal. Make it good!’

Alice had foreseen a visitor; this time she’d been in the shower, and had almost fell to her certain demise when the vision overtook her. Her vision also included a cream-coloured gown, and at the time she thought she was watching the movie she’d planned to see with Claire that weekend. When Johnathan had strode in that evening with his boss Mr Lurch, white envelope in hand and snide grin affixed to his face, Alice had gotten her first inkling of certain doom. Jonathan was a lawyer, and she’d heard he was quite good. Her father loved to talk about Jonathan day and night- as though he didn’t have a son of his own to be proud of. Jonathan’s family held influence, they had amassed great wealth; Jonathan was a bright young man, highly sought after by the girls- a prize to behold! She’d heard it all. How her father had swindled him into marrying Alice she couldn’t say. In any case, it didn’t seem like Jonathan could see beyond the bridge of his own nose. Alice cracked a half-grin, the grin she shared with her grim-faced brother, when he wasn’t busy being so grim-faced. Jonathan was blue-eyed, with sandy hair that refused to be gelled back, and a towering height that rivalled the Timothys’. He always wore some amalgamation of obnoxious foreign suit, and Alice always noted the color of his ties didn’t quite pull the outfits together.

She was suddenly pulled from her two minutes hate, as she realized every face in the living room was staring at her expectantly. Her father’s fleshy face, his slick-looking black hair and burgeoning moustache, were rigid with anticipation. His green eyes were boring a hole just beyond Alice’s head, and she could tell he was desperately pondering something.

“I just figured I would send the tailor up, to not put poor Alice out.” John had finished. ‘Poor Alice’ hung in the air, and the real Alice could feel a dark pair of eyes laser focus on her squared shoulders.

“I don’t think it’s necessary.” Came the dark eyes’ reply “We’ll drive her into town ourselves, no need to make her sore- she looks like she’s going to go belly up already.”

Tim’s jab at Alice had clearly tickled John’s funny bone, and even Timothy Sr rocked with relieved laughter now.

“Drive me where, exactly?” Came Alice’s antagonistic reply.

Tim cleared his throat suddenly; Alice cursed mentally, he had been buying her time to cue into the conversation, not throwing her to the wolves. 

“Must be the nerves,” her mother had chimed, and had emerged from the kitchen with a forced grin and a tray of small espressos. They were John’s favorite, and Alice had to politely pretend she enjoyed them as well these days. “Brides get like that you know- all jittery. Hard to focus. You can send the tailor right up dear, we have her dress ready. It was my grandmother’s you know.” Lucille glowed with a momentary pride, but her husband’s dark expression quickly robbed her of her flitting triumph.

“All set then,” John sighed, eyeing his coffee with his steely eyes “I just don’t want to put you out, poor little bunny.” Alice was getting tired of the pet names; she hated how John looked at her, like she was incomplete; missing the faculty for complex speech.

“All that’s going to be water under the bridge, egg,” Timothy Sr waved his great hand dismissively “I’ve got the top doctor in Ansonia dealing with the epilepsy issue. Alice’ll be hotsy-totsy in time for your wedding- hell, with time to spare even.”

Another wave of antagonistic laughter washed over Alice, and her mother’s feather light touch was upon her, coaxing her back into her chair. Alice crossed her ankles and smiled widely, feigning enjoyment. Her father and Jonathan seemed to be laboring under the impression Alice would soon be ‘fixed’ in time for marital bliss to kick in; maybe just in time for her to start churning out little Bechtel-Westbrooks of her own. 

‘He’d like that’, she thought of her own father ‘the heel.’

When Timothy Sr was sufficiently drunk on brandy, choosing to pass out on the sofa, and Johnathan had finished with the humms and haaws of Timothy Jr’s many questions, the evening came to a close. Tim did the usual, and excused himself to be confined to his room. His mask of hospitality had slipped off like a person flipping a light switch, and he’d stalked up the stairs and out of sight. Alice loaded up the sink for her mother, who reminded her in a shockingly shrill whisper that her wedding gown fitting was impending, and then ushered her away.

“If you don’t get your beauty sleep we’ll really be in for it.” Lucille had sighed, and had attacked Alice’s boyish hair with renewed vigour, smoothing it as much as she could. 

Alice smiled slyly on her way upstairs, getting the faintest, futuristic flash of Claire’s fake-snoring. As usual, this vision too would come to pass, and Alice tip toed carefully by Tim’s deadly quiet room to her own. She quickly shed the wrap dress, and sitting on the edge of her bed, the ‘snoring’ in the other room ceased and a new set of footprints scurried across the hall.

Alice’s door opened ever so slightly, it’s creak masked by her father’s snores in the living room, and in padded Claire in her pyjamas.

“I thought he’d never leave!” She said in a mock whisper.

Alice chuckled heartily, and scooping her sister in a great hug planted a peck on her cheek. “Ain’t you supposed to be sleeping?”

Claire snorted- a habit she’d swiped from Alice “Ain’t you supposed to be fussing over your wedding dress?”

Alice groaned, releasing Claire from the chokehold at once “Don’t remind me I gotta marry that daddy. What a-“

“Heel.” Claire had finished the sentence, nodding sagely. Her eyes twinkled mischievously “I’ll take a butt.” She said, waggling her blonde eyebrows like a swindler.

Alice gave her a meaningful look “You’re such a baby vamp ya’know that?”

This was Alice’s favorite part of John’s visits: the rooftop after party of his departure. The Bechtel house was a modest A-line, very typical Alice had always thought. Here in their sparse suburb, where their neighbours were just out of reach, she’d thought of the strange house; large-looking on the outside, and somewhat cramped on the inside, as a reflection of her family’s wealth. Johnathan was a welcome distraction from the fear of a creeping ‘Depression’ (or that’s what the rumours from Timothy Sr’s office called it). Alice had yet to see anything particularly alarming; whenever she focused she saw a great big A-line house like her own, and she assumed it was to be the Bechtel-Westbrook residence of the future. Only, perhaps this one was gaudier. She heavily discounted her father’s occasional murmurings that soon everybody would be out on the street; even Tim had bought into the hysteria, and he often scanned radio shows for ‘proof’ of economic collapse.

“Not us,” Timothy Sr often declared, with the same sagely intonation Claire used when she was being funny “Not with a golden goose like that Westbrook boy hanging around.”

Alice’s saving grace, her great bay window that overlooked the backyard, had a funny little fault. She’d seen the fault in her visions, back when this was Tim’s room, and had happily traded her desk furniture for a swap in bedrooms. The window was loose in its track, and could easily be hauled right off the pane and onto her floor. Alice felt around the bottom of her bed for her secret pack of cigarettes, hiding between the mattress springs from her dutiful (and frankly nosy) mother. Claire locked the door, one flushed ear pressed against it to spot incoming trouble. When she gave the thumbs up, the merry pair climbed onto the shingles of the jutted roof over the kitchen window, and sat Indian-style on the terracotta. The night breeze was sweet with the smell of spring, and below them a lone pool noodle floated idly to and fro. The kitchen light was on, no doubt Lucille scrubbing away; Alice thought her mother looked like a mighty gibbon when she did housework- all flailing limbs and wide eyes. Alice watched the blades of the yard make soft ripples in the moonlight, and then threw a cautionary glance to the box-like structure next door; the bay window of their parents' bedroom. The lights were off, her father obviously not yet riled by Lucille into ascending the stairs. Alice wagered they had twenty minutes before it was time to clear out.

She had tossed her dress to the floor, and sat in her undergarments, staring at the wide open pasture before them. They were the last house on the block, and there was nothing save a few trees and a small cliff face for the next mile. Alice tucked her knees into her cotton underdress, and lighting her cigarette with great dexterity, drew her knees to her chest. Beside her a faraway-looking Claire was staring up at the moon.

“Did’ya know the moon’s made of cheese?” Alice asked softly.

Claire smiled broadly, her round face lighting up “Did you know Little Skippy passed me a love note in class the other day?” She countered, still gazing at the singular cloud in the moonlit sky.

Alice held out her delicate hand, relinquishing her cigarette. Claire Bechtel was only a child; her hair was tucked out of the way by a great ribbon, her pyjamas were Tim’s hand-me-downs. They hung off her chubby body comically, her chest flat and her hips wide. Alice wagered she’d grow up to be quite beautiful, although perhaps a little out of vogue for this century. Then again, everything was out of vogue for Claire, who was simply too quick for stagnant times; she had the uncanny ability to foresee trends and patterns where none previously existed. Alice thought her baby sister was absolutely magical, in her own right.

Claire took a great drag of the cigarette, and finally made eye contact “I told him to go chase himself,” she grinned widely “Told him my sister’s getting handcuffed, and the groom’s got a sweet little brother all for me.”

Alice shook with laughter “I never did like Little Skippy,” Skippy’s real name was Richard, aptly named for his cowardice. “Bit flighty that one.”

Claire lay on her back “School sure is boring. All the good eggs got sent to the draft anyway.” There was an uncomfortable silence between them, and Alice audibly gulped at the thought of World War 1. “I hope they’ve gone up to heaven...the poor dears.” Alice didn’t like the aged weariness in Claire’s voice now.

“Now, now,” Alice said soothingly, snatching the cigarette from Claire’s mouth “You would have been too young to do anything about it anyhow. It’s me who got the short end of the stick, you were still a tot- scooting around the house annoying Tim.” Alice wondered if her soul mate had indeed died in those tumultuous days; sometimes when she’d gone to school and looked out over the sea of statuesque girls in uniform, she’d caught the faintest glimpses of fallen bombs, advancing fleets, and oddly enough- a sandy beach.

Claire gave a hum of appreciation, and then rolled over happily, her mind clearly reeling with new excitement.

“What did the ball and chain say?” She asked.

Alice snorted humorously “Thinks I can’t be trusted to show up to the dress fitting, let alone the wedding. Think he ought to marry Tim- the way they’re always cutting up.”

Claire frowned, looking pointedly at the cigarette her sister was nursing “I wish you could stay here forever with us. I’ll move in with you two as soon as I can.”

At this Alice did smile, and she ruffled Claire’s hair “Why move out at all? I’ll build a house and a connectin’ tunnel to your bedroom. We’ll live in the basement like the creepers from that comic book,” she wiggled her eyebrows menacingly “I’ll have dad build me a doggy door so you can come and go.”

Claire chuckled “And a monkey swing so Tim can come and go too.” The girls clapped hands over their mouths and bumped shoulders, shaking with giggles.

“You think he loves you?” Claire asked at last, polishing off the butt of the cigarette. She blew out a cloud of dense smoke, unlike the delicate tendrils that emanated from Alice’s own mouth.

Alice hugged her knees a little closer “I dunno. Why would he marry a blue-nose like me anyway,” she shot Claire a mischievous smile “Does Bonnie love Clyde? Does the Lone Ranger love the Red Indian? Who knows.” But Alice knew; she was absolutely doomed. She’d seen him in her visions: pale, blonde, but always with a set of strange coloured eyes. This part of her vision didn’t make sense, and she sometimes wondered if a honey-haired look alike would come along and crash her wedding somehow.

The girls had climbed back through the window just as their parents’ light had flicked on, bathing the now-misty night in a soft yellow glow. Claire had doused herself in talcum powder to hide the cigarette smell, and Alice had mercilessly teased her as she’d crawled into her own bed. Soon the only evidence of her visitor was the light click of the door closing behind Claire. That night Alice’s dreams were plagued by the usual battlefield, until she’d been in hot pursuit of a soldier and stumbled onto a wedding scene. There was a tall man with honey-coloured hair at the alter; Alice had called John’s name, but there came no reply. He’d turned around, and in the reflection of his brooch Alice could make out her own matching set of topaz-coloured eyes


	3. Radio Interference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor Silas Goldwyn prepares himself for his day job as a psychiatrist at Barkley Sanatorium. On today’s to-do list is a cross examination of one very willing Alice Bechtel; who evidently has not been sleeping very well at night. But who could suspect Alice is plagued by visions of Silas’s sometimes-niece and sometimes-daughter, the hauntingly beautiful and suspiciously ghoulish Elise?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t slant text so I have to settle for asterisks which I don’t like but oh well. So it bothered me that Elise didn’t really have a purpose, and I was like maybe I’ll make her a cult leader or a pedophile hunter or something, and then I thought....a scientist? Cause I mean Silas is kind of a scientist (spoiler) and a psychologist already. Tbh this story doesn’t have a super clear direction (it has a plot direction tho) but it’s so fun to write.
> 
> What else? Uuhhhhh that’s my closing statements I guess!

The fire had at last stopped; it’s searing pain coming to roost in the center of her chest. With a great spluttering heave her breath hitched and evened out. At last, she thought happily, at last merciful death had come. There was no air in this vacuum now, only the uncomfortable pulling of her very heart- higher, higher, with insurmountable pressure as though it was being ripped out. How long had she been screaming? Days? Years? Her pitiful groans were drawn out now, and her writhing was slow, her nails dug into the soft earth- death was inching nearer. All at once the searing stung, like being pierced perpetually by lightning, resulting in a head rush as though her skull was being crushed like a watermelon by a baseball bat. Her body jolted, and she opened her eyes with a crazed vigour; a great gulping breath was thrown from her chest, and she fell back with a thud.

Here eyes were wide, gazing at an overcast sky; was this heaven? She clutched reflexively at her chest- the same clothes she’d been wearing when it happened. So this was hell. It seemed like a good time to wail, but only a lingering burn stung the corners of her eyes. Her throat was parched, more parched than it had ever felt; it was painful even. She listened for the sound of her rushing blood or her frantic heart, but no such music came. She sat up, clutching the earth for support; it crumbled through her fingers. She was terrified now, her eyes darting, her breath held. How long had she been frozen in terror? How long had her breath been held? It seemed...too long...uncomfortably long. Or so it should have been.

Somebody was behind her, propping up her shoulders. She could not scream; perhaps she knew she had nothing to fear. This stranger smelled of wormwood, like her father had built their ancestral home out of. He smelled like a sweet pea flowers brewed into homely tea; he smelled like mothballs, and Elise could suddenly see the texture of his sleeve in extreme detail; it was like she’d never truly used her eyes before this moment. The musk was rolling off him in waves; an impossibly pale hand had weaved around one of her wrists- but this was a comfort, not a restraint.

“I’m so very glad you’re awake,” the stranger said quietly, his voice was a scratchy tenor, like a very ancient and thirsty person “I’ve waited a long time for you.”

**

“The human world is barely awake,” Came Elise’s quiet protest “Must you leave so soon?”

Silas shot her an accusatory glance “As though we haven’t been together for nearly 9 decades. Ceaselessly.” He retorted.

Elise’s reply was obviously wounded “You spend all the slumbering hours with her. I am alone.”

Silas kicked himself; he could see Elise’s resigned face in his imagination, probably hidden behind her hair now. It would be the same sorry expression she’d had when he’d first come upon her.

“Apologies, light of my eyes,” Silas murmured “Tonight Loredana will be...fully engrossed in something or other. I’ve planted the thought in her mind already.”

He turned to Elise, whose little body was lost in a satin pyjama. She was eyeing him accusingly from her spot on the raggedy couch. He cupped her childlike face in one hand “I suppose you must be starving; we’ll make a night out of it.”

Elise wasn’t one for smiling, but Silas flashed the merry image of the two gorging themselves on a corpse into her overworked mind, and Elise blinked in understanding. He caught a glean of her own thoughts too; they were overshadowed by thirst; and perhaps, he thought ruefully, a poorly-masked jealousy tinged her mind this morning.

“How was your evening, then?” She asked plainly, clearly forgiving him now.

Silas sighed; he wasn’t sure Elise could truly appreciate the thrill of having a mate. He almost laughed- if he could somehow blush the thought of keeping Lori as a mate would have surely made him turn steam-engine red. He eyed Elise warily, as though about to explain sex to a child and not a being a hundred years old.

“That nephew of hers still doesn’t agree with me,” he smiled humorously “he very nearly suspects what I am. I bombard him with images of sleep, but he fears I’ll do away with poor Ms. Negri in the night. He interrupts often.” At this Silas was especially glum, as dividing attention between trying not to destroy Loredana’s furniture and keeping an unnaturally trained ear out for a nosy child was especially impossible.

Elise smiled. It was a subtle upturn of her full mouth; overly coy, and perhaps purposely muted. She was laughing at the fact Silas was being thwarted by a human child, of course. The merciless creature. He knew his little child so well by now; of course a sadist like her would have found his misery a form of cosmic justice.

“I’m off.” Silas said glumly, glad the overcast city was under siege by it’s usual drizzle “I’ll check in around the evening.” Elise was staring at him, unblinking. Silas sighed and pressed their foreheads together; Elise’s exhale was shaky, she felt warm. Not uncomfortable like Loredana, but homely. She smelled like the grass and soil after rain, like a cloud of baby powder, like a lily in bloom; Silas couldn’t have made a more perfect little girl out of clay. “Behave.” He instructed her like humans spoke to their little dogs.

“Always.” Came the smug reply.

With that Silas was off, climbing the winding staircase from their basement apartment to the bustling sidewalk. Silas and his sometimes daughter (for lack of a better term) Elise lived beneath the Main Street Movie Emporium. The Emporium saw great foot traffic from the common city dwellers, who were not quite rich enough to enjoy the silver screen at home. Silas had seen it once, the television, while he was doing a house call. It had scared him to bits- the rate the humans were inventing new machines made Silas weary; any day now they would stray too far in their sciences, and perhaps discover the world of the undead. Silas shook out his umbrella and braced himself against the rain; was that what he was? Undead? Or perhaps merely transformed? He often wondered.

The winding and rusted stairs that led beneath the theatre let out onto the cracked sidewalk, already alive with foot traffic. Great brown-coloured brick buildings stared down at him, and the street (half cobblestone of old and half pavement of new) was alive with jalopys, cyclists, and paper boys. Everybody seemed to zig-zag in the city; there was no cohesion, no invisibility. Even at night the street lamps illuminated swathes of sidewalk, where men smoked during after-hours and the occasional young girl came bustling down the street from her sweetheart’s house. Silas grit his teeth, nevermind the emergence of all those human nightclubs. His sensitive ears could pick out the sound of rogue jazz from miles away; it seemed to entertain Elise at least, and she perched by their street-level window sometimes with wide doe-eyes. This was the only occasion she wasn’t begging Silas to move, as the lively inner city drove her up the wall with all its madness and action. Silas thought of Elise like a little bat, especially in the way she spent her days in the theatre, watching productions while perched in the empty balcony seats.

“What could you possibly find so fascinating?” Silas had interrogated her once, as she was in one of her rare good moods.

“It’s quiet. What if you send me a thought, and I miss it?” Silas had abruptly shut his mouth, of course she’d made it about him.

They’d sometimes posed as father and daughter (despite them looking nothing alike), sometimes as estranged half-siblings, and sometimes (such as in the last couple of years at the theatre) they were an uncle and his orphaned niece. The apartment subletter, an old man with a strikingly gentile Rottweiler and atrocious eyesight, had fallen madly in love with Elise. He’d pinched her cheeks, which had produced such a vampire-like expression of murderous intent on Elise’s face that Silas had suppressed raucous laughter. Thank God the man was blind as a bat, Silas often thought.

The city had a remnant of time gone by: a packed street car that run once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Silas’s superhuman strength guaranteed him a ride to the edge of town, as he held on at a angle that would have snapped a human wrist. Once safely out of bounds, he simply ran the last few miles to Barkley Sanatorium. It was a shockingly modern facility by Silas’s standards; after all he’d spent the first few decades of being a doctor in the most barbaric institutions known to man. It had a smart country road where patients drove in, and it wasn’t so out of the way that it didn’t retain the impression of being a city hospital. It was flanked by deep woods, and Silas passed the occasional deer. At first his interest had been purely aesthetic, but one fine day he’d hunted down a young buck and sucked it dry. Elise had appeared mere moments after he’d beamed the image into her mind. 

“Abominable!” She’d said in disgust, prodding the buck’s head with her foot.

“Maybe so,” Silas said smartly, his arms folded across his chest “But I’ll tell you this; I no longer thirst.”

And so they’d started a strange precedent; a diet of half human and half animal blood. Silas was afraid a fully altered diet might destroy the pair’s physiology, and so they oscillated between animal and human for the time being. It would be many more years of testing, he’d resolved, before he attempted to sell another vampire on the idea. As a result, the pair’s eyes had taken on a milky quality; a hushed caramel hue with a filmy surface. Silas often wore glasses when he played human, in an effort to pass the eyes off as a stigmatism. The irony hadn’t escaped him, that this annoying trivial detail tied him to his once-human life.

The morning air was crisp, and a few ambulances were dropping off patients here and there. The men looked exhausted, and were hunched together. Some were making conversation, some were smoking, and a couple were chatting up nurses who held styrofoam cups filled with coffee on trays. Tuberculosis was slowly relinquishing its hold on the population, but people who had begun to waste away were by no means free to leave. Silas felt especially bad for those with Tuberculosis of the brain, as he’d seen the horrible transition from human to corpse in a matter of hours. The first night he’d been held up in that particular wing of Barkley, he’d ruefully wished he could shed vampiric tears. He’d gone home to Elise, in a wild panic that he hadn’t transmitted any thoughts throughout the night, and fell to his knees at her little feet. Elise had known better than to ask what was wrong in the human world, and they’d spent the long morning ahead on the floor; Elise had petted his curly hair for close to twelve hours that day, and never once had the little darling uttered a word of complaint.

“Comin’ in for your 8am then?” Asked Marty as Silas strode in. Marty was the head secretary, and despite his bossy demeanour and mismatched socks, Silas liked him very much.

“Best patient in my roster,” he’d agreed with a grin, and had dodged a freshly made coffee from a passing nurse “Is Loredana in today?”

Marty was hunched over a secretary in training, clearly displeased at her penmanship. “Who?”

Silas hesitated at the little plexiglass booth. “Nurse Negri.” He kicked himself for the informality, but Marty hadn’t seemed to notice; he was too engrossed in the trainee’s curly lettering. 

“Oh,” came the stout little man’s reply “She’s on the sixth floor. Surgery this morning with Doctor Tumble.”

Silas’s face fell slightly, but he resolved to ambush Lori after lunch instead.

“Have a good day.” Silas offered, and dodged yet another bustling staff member.

“Clear the way!” She was crying into the parking lot “The bedpan delivery is here!”

When Silas had reached his office, his patient was already inside. He set down his briefcase and affixed his glasses on their old black chain. It was his favorite visitor in the world, and his eyes were fixed on her spiky black hair.

“Alice,” he chimed, his smile betraying him now “How nice it is to see you.”

Alice turned around in her little chair, her grin betraying a genuine happiness, but her green eyes their usual shade of uneasiness. Her lithe hands, perfectly manicured, were gripping the back of the chair now; her thin cat-like body was twisted in trying to get a good look at Silas.

“Bright and early,” she chided him “As usual.”

Silas shook her hand, the heat of her human skin making him jump a little; he sat down, and busied himself with gathering the contents of his desk.

“Sorry I let myself in,” Alice said sheepishly “Marty told me to come right up. Tim’s outside...somewhere.”

Ah, she’d brought the brother. Silas didn’t think very much of him; he was as haughty as he was young and naive, and all the bravado in the world hadn’t been enough to dazzle Silas. Perhaps if Silas had been mortal, Tim could have gotten away with it.

“How are things on the wedding front?” Silas asked innocently.

“Well doc,” Alice’s defeated reply came “That’s why we’re here.”

“Jonesing for a butt, then?” Silas often let Alice smoke- a rare moment of peace in her human life- when they had their sessions. He thought it made her more honest.

“None for me thanks.” Her eyes were ringed with deep blue circles, she’d given up on sleeping, evidently. Silas pretended to be adjusting his glasses, but with a sigh he entered Alice’s little mind, and implanted a single suggestion: calm. The confusion in her face was clear; he wagered she was probably wondering why she’d suddenly had a thought in Silas’s voice.

“Something the matter?” He asked.

“I could’a sworn you said something, Doctor Goldwyn.” Alice muttered, and opened a compact mirror to check her face. Silas suppressed a laugh.

Silas had been Alice’s psychiatrist for some time now, and whether or not she knew it Alice was the principle reason he’d been tied to her little town of Astonia. Silas’s terrible fault was his sympathy for the fragile beings of the human world; and particularly heart wrenching had been the plight of the little creature before him. His professional curiosity had recently given way to something much different, however, and Loredana’s accusing eyes had picked up on right away. Very unfortunately, Elise had also tired of hearing about Alice, but her suspicious little face had been decidedly more threatening.

“Oh, please!” He’d said, exasperated “Like I would ever...” he hid his face in shame, contemplating his choice of words “Disturb, the poor girl. My interest is simply in part to her possible vampiric nature.”

Wrong choice of words. Elise hadn’t spoken to him for a week, her little eyes always trained on him with a ghoulish intensity. He’d placated her with a great stuffed bear and a bouquet of roses, but the disdain for Alice Bechtel still coloured her innermost thoughts.

Silas had diagnosed Alice with epilepsy, and he thought he’d been very convincing in making her believe she was indeed physically sick. As the months rolled on, however, Silas had come to believe Alice’s uncanny visions of the future were a gift rather than a curse. The same hunger he’d felt when he’d first spotted Elise edged to the forefront of his mind when he laid eyes on Alice; what an excellent vampire she’d make! He could see it; their ragtag little family, complete with the most wonderful daughter one could ask for. But alas, he often thought when the mania gripped him, Alice Bechtel belonged to the land of the sun, and until she expressed a desire to leave it Silas had no hope in the world of acquiring her.

Acquire, he thought suddenly, what a sanitized word for what he longed to do.

“The fitting is this weekend,” he’d missed Alice’s segway into regular conversation “John still...believes I’m fixable.”

Silas folded his hands on his desk “Do you believe there is still something to fix?”

Alice snorted and rolled her eyes, and Silas suppressed a laugh; this human’s funny little expressions never ceased to entertain.

“Things are getting...better.” Silas could hear the doubt in her voice.

He entered her mind and planted a pretty picture of the two having a nice chat; this generally inspired honesty. The ricochet of her thoughts were coloured with anxiety, and Silas sighed; seemingly, to Alice, at nothing. 

Silas’s funny little power allowed him to see great success as a doctor. He could pop in and out of vampire and human minds alike (although his affect on vampires was much more potent) and plant ideas; suggestions, images, even whole sentences. He’d entered Alice’s mind so frequently that he’d begun to glean the flavour of her inner monologue, and sometimes on the retreat his power dragged up his unwilling victim’s thoughts like a fishing net. Only Elise, who Silas had a hundred years of practice on, was able to clearly share with him real-life images and memories as he retreated from her mind. He wondered if he continued to see Alice at the rate he did, if perhaps he’d be able to drudge up more one day.

“They pretend like everything’s gonna be fine one morning,” Alice was saying now; evidently Silas’s interference had made her a fountain of exposition “Like I won’t be crackers no more.”

“I suppose your father sees marriage as a quick fix,” Silas murmured, remembering the first day he’d met the horribly pushy man “There’s a great deal on your shoulders I’m afraid.”

“If I keep pretending this whole thing ain’t applesauce I think I can keep myself sane.” Alice waggled her eyebrows, and Silas laughed humorously.

He wanted to tell her how gifted- how special and coveted she’d be in the world of the moon. He wanted to jump up on his desk and declare his paternal love, unwavering and unconditional, for this poor little human. He’d slaughter her callous family if it pleased her; just to convince her to join him.

“Why not change Loredana Negri then?” The memory of Elise’s martyresque week of being mute returned to him.

“I will not allow myself to destroy poor Ms. Negris’s soul in such a way.” He’d said quietly “The poor dear has much too good an agenda in the waking world for me to spoil her hopes and dreams.” His sadness had been genuine; his dream of a nuclear family eluding him once again. There had been another time, a dark spot on vampiric history, when the fantastical prospect of having a child had weighed heavy on his mind.

Silas’s tired eyes fell on Alice again; she was talking, clearly placated and unbothered now, about her distaste for her betrothed and all his pointless fanfare. Silas would have laughed along with her, but his eyes were trained on her purplish bags. Her heartbeat was scattered and faint, a mix of fatigue and near constant anxiety. He’d have to prescribe something to help her sleep, or she’d be awake until she dropped dead from exhaustion. He knew from experience that she was being plagued by the visions again. He’d tried to get details, but Alice had resisted him. He’d tried playing cards during a session, bribing her with cigarettes, plying her with sedatives, and even bringing in Elise and her strange little power to force Alice to open up. One day, on the brink of frustrated insanity, he’d gotten Alice to agree to hypnosis. Alice’s dreams, divulged in her fugue state, had been so bloody- and ruefully correct, that he’d resolved to never peer into her mind again. She’d had a dream of a pair of strange alabaster beings, ripping apart a steed in the woods. Alice Bechtel had seen the future- only a few hours away- wherein Silas and Elise feasted on a stag.

So here they were; in a constant waltz of medication, pointless talking, and quipping about John or Tim or Lucille or whoever Alice had a gripe with that day. When Alice finally left that morning, after stern instructions to purchase sleeping medication, Silas had relinquished her to her grim faced older brother and watched warily as they’d stalked off. He tried to beam a suggestion into Alice’s head before she passed the corner; he’d been desperately trying to uplift her spirits.

Alice half smiled as she turned the corner, thinking about how desperate Doctor Goldwyn had seemed flapping her newest prescription at her. He’d been leaning on his book shelf with one arm, towering over Alice as his ginger beard quivered with emphasis. 

“Make no mistake- watch the chemist do it! If he adds in too much powder you march right back here!” He’d fussed. Alice’s eyes had been affixed to his sandy hair- the good doctor never seemed to be beyond his mid thirties, she wondered how he avoided aging so gracefully.

She wasn’t feeling resolutely better as she climbed into the taxi beside Tim, but she was feeling...placated. She could tolerate a few more weeks in the house until another unwitting ward of her father’s would shuttle her back to the Sanatorium. Tim wasn’t helping, his usual grim dark mood at seeing Doctor Goldwyn had evidently won him over. He was grasping the prescription like a summons, his stalky body bouncing with the car.

“What did he say?” She’d been ambushed when they’d stepped into the hospital staircase.

Alice had sighed harshly “He thinks I’ll improve if I got some sleep.”

“I thought you said you were getting sleep?” Tim had barked, and Alice was aware he must have realized she was lying about not being up all night anymore.

“Just tell Ma you’re going and get my usual happy pills, ok?” Alice had shot Tim a stony look; the kind of look that let her get away with things as though she were the older sibling.

“Aye aye your majesty.” Tim had muttered, and he’d kicked a stray piece of stone down the stairs.

Doctor Goldwyn had seemed faraway today, maybe even a little farther away than usual. He always seemed to be lost in a trance, and stared at Alice the way somebody appraised jewelry. It was uncomfortable, not in the way some of the other doctors ogled her, but it was off putting. Yet for all her effort to be cold towards him, Silas’s cheery disposition and spastic energy turned her into an open book. She could never shake the feeling of calm that seemed to follow him around, and sometimes she thought she would remember dreaming of him, but the dreams were unfocused and bleak-looking. 

Alice knew she’d dreamt of Doctor Goldwyn because of the nightmarish shape that followed him both in the waking and dreaming world; his niece Elise was like a comic book ghoul as far as Alice was concerned. She turned to the window and crinkled her nose, avoiding Tim and remembering the comic books Claire sometimes smuggled into the house.

“Night of The Living Terror?” She’d questioned her once, while Claire read secretly beneath the covers with a torch in hand. “How do you stomach that? Aw Claire look at that!” She’d hissed “His whole goog’s been poked out!”

Alice had met Elise once- although she hesitated to use the word ‘met’. It was more like she’d been ambushed by Elise the moment she’d walked in, and as her good doctor had motioned her onto his usual red upholstered couch, Elise had been sitting prettily by her side the whole time. Alice remembered being stuck with a horrible longing for her mother and Claire, who’d been seated in the hall. As strange as it was, she wanted to run into Lucille’s arms and kiss her shiny, round forehead. Therapy did things to you.

Doctor Goldwyn’s niece seemed to hate Alice, and Alice was sure she caught conspiratorial glances between uncle and niece the whole time she’d been in the office. 

“He forgot his lunch at home,” Elise had begun, in a whispery voice that had taken Alice by surprise.

“And she’s come to bring it to me.” Silas had finished, gesturing to an empty looking brown bag on the desk.

Alice couldn’t help but think the affair had been staged. 

Elise’s strange scent, like a musky rose and an errant freesia in its pungeantness, was the first off-kilter thing to hit Alice. Elise’s milky golden eyes had been fixed so perfectly, and unblinking, on Silas’s face, she looked like a wonderful little statue. She was so off putting that when she did finally move, the languid motions of her limbs looked staged; like a method actor who’d been pretending to be a little girl for a hundred years. Not to mention, Alice thought while biting her tongue, Elise’s expressions. She seemed childlike enough, despite the dark glamour of her long black hair and her porcelain-smooth skin, but again those horrible eyes. They were magnetic, hypnotic, and all together frightening. When Elise was upset her features took on an otherworldly anger, when she was pleased there was no dead giveaway- only the slightest upward tilt of her bow lips, as though she were mocking you. Alice hated when she’d been addressed directly, and that unsettling little cherub face had descended on her with so much malice- so much apparent disdain- that Alice had asked to be excused to use the washroom. Elise absolutely loathed her; Alice couldn’t have been sure of the reason why. 

The creepy little Goldwyn child was an outstanding figure in her nightmares now. She was always crawling, brutalizing, or otherwise sneaking around the darkened streets of Astonia in Alice’s visions. Alice was beginning to hate Elise a little bit, too.

“Poor little thing,” the senior Goldwyn had been laboring to explain “My...younger sister died, and left her penniless in the world.” Alice’s stomach had flip flopped a little bit, as though she couldn’t truly believe him. The lines had been delivered expertly, with all the appropriate facial expressions, but Elise’s upturned mouth had betrayed them.

They’d turned the corner into the tree cover now, and in half an hour Alice would be back in the seat of her misery. When they’d left her mother had been shrilly talking to somebody on the phone, her agenda opened wide before her on the kitchen table. Claire had been roped into whatever was going on in the kitchen, and was sitting unhappily on the kitchen counter with a pin cushion and needles attached to her wrist. She’d been dangling her feet, and her shoes had fallen off with a ‘plop’. 

Tim sniffed, he produced a newspaper and buried his nose in it. Perhaps he’d felt the horrible foreboding creeping up on Alice. She caught a glimpse of the headline; 42 dead in Seattle, 3 dead in Maryland, and a mother and child bled dry a mile from Astonia. Alice turned her face away, afraid that a new batch of horrible visions would be influenced by the news. Gang violence seemed to be quickly evolving beyond shooting and looting- regular people were being slaughtered. Tim sniffed again, and she wondered if it was in response to her eyeballing him and his paper.

She forgot Silas’s little monster for a moment and stared out the window dreamily. This portion of the dirt road, with its mossy trees and its fallen branches, reminded Alice of a happy little painting. The muted seafoam greens against the afternoon sun seemed like a happy refuge for deer and stray cats and perhaps picnicking people. She closed her eyes for half a second, and as though her body knew what was to come with her new medication, she slipped into a coma-like sleep against the taxi window.


End file.
